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The Hold Steady Playing Beacon Theater in October

With Heaven is Whenever scheduled for release in just a few short weeks, on May 4th, it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise yesterday when The Hold Steady announced their first NYC show of the year. But then that show turned out to be at the Beacon Theater of all places. And on October 7th. So, yeah, we’re expected to believe that the band is putting out a record in May, and not playing a hometown show until October. Seems unlikely, no? Presale tickets for the Beacon show went on sale this morning at 10, and the regular sale starts on Friday at 10.

Whenever they wind up playing, it will be with a couple new band members. Along with yesterday’s show announcement, the band welcomed third guitarist Steve Selvidge and keyboard player Dan Neustadt, who’s faced with the unenviable task of replacing Franz Nicolay.

The band also announced two upcoming television appearances: Letterman on 4/30 and The Colbert Report on 5/14.

One Comment

I’ve been puzzling over that 4/17 show for weeks. It now sounds, from internet rumblings, a bit more likely to be at Bowery than Music Hall (I had heard Bowery, then Music Hall “moved from Bowery,” then both, and then Bowery again; I wonder if they’re doing some kind of super-secret double-show?).

I actually went to their first show of their current smaller-city tour in Ardsley (my ladyfriend’s hometown!) last weekend, and saw the new members. New guitarist is nondescript (though his playing sounded fine), and the keyboardist was way in the back, both physically and in the mix, so I didn’t see much of him. Awesome show, though, as usual; sweaty and epic and all that. They played lots of Separation Sunday songs for Good Friday, as well as six of the new songs. They sounded pretty decent though none of them stood out as, say, the Chips Ahoy of 2010. It seems like maybe it’s going to be an album dominated by Magazines/You Can Make Him Like You/Two-Handed Handshake type of songs (mid-tempo, less kickass, but still great lyrics).

My bet is not only the club show happening with some 48-hours-in-advance ticket sale, but probably some kind of big outdoor show because, yeah, like you said, a NYC band putting out a record in May and not playing a show until October would be really strange. I’d bet on the now-standard last-minute-club-show-near-big-date, too, a la Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Vampire Weekend and whoever else plays Radio City type venues.

Mike, you sound like you have a weird love-hate thing with Franz (or at least a like-meh thing) — I’ve been following your HS posts as a fellow nerd/fan, and it seems like you go back and forth between considering him overrated and irreplaceable! My feeling is, he brought a lot of flair to the records and especially the shows, but they did Almost Killed Me pre-Franz and that record is awesome, plus half the fun of their shows is the crowd and the energy, which doesn’t seem to have diminished without him.